We woke up early Christmas morning, due to both continuing jet lag and excitement, and headed out for akihabara. Known as “electric light city” it’s the main center of Japanese geek (otaku) culture. We had breakfast at the usual train station noodle shop, but still arrived at 8am before the stores opened. We stopped at Mr Donut for some coffee and wifi, and met a young guy from SoCal who seemed to have been up all night, and was eating a healthy breakfast of three donuts and some green soda.

After the donuts settled, we wandered the streets looking for more food and geek sustenance. We stopped at a few video game parlors, but eventually found them boring. The crane games had great prizes, but seemed rigged, and most of the game stations were first person, so we couldn’t play against each other.

We had more fun at the theme cafes. First, we stopped at Gundam, which our SoCal friend warned us was expensive and “not that good”. He was technically correct, but I had a decent banana crepe with a giant robot face on it, and the toilet was outfitted with a jet engine takeoff sound. We were off to a good start.

Cat cafe

Next was a cat cafe, to calm us down a little. Apparently pets are hard to come by, and cafes fill the snuggle needs of the catless. We sat down next to Curl, a fat orange tabby splayed flat on his back and so asleep I thought he might be dead. After I felt his heart beat while rubbing his belly, I conjectured that he might be some sort of somnophilia fetish cat (Google it). Or maybe he just had too much tuna.

After getting our fill of pets (or almost our fill, because we were asked to leave once it became full of other people who wanted a turn), we moved on to have our other needs met at a Maid Cafe. The first we stopped at had taciturn Victorian dressed women, and was the originator of the market, but was described by a guidebook as “boring.” We agreed and left before she arrived with tea. Maidreamin’ was more our style.

Our maid waitress introduced herself as “meow meow” and had us close our eyes to enter a dreamland where delicious magic reigned. After a meal of pancakes, ice cream and zima, I’m a believer.
Maid cafe, eating cute food and drinking zima.

We went back to our place in Ikebukuro for a nap, and then out for dinner at KFC, apparently a Japanese tradition. Ruth regaled us with tales of poultry judging, which I made her save until after we had finished the fried chicken. We ended the night at a bowling alley with a pack of Santas and a reindeer, throwing rocks while drinking Asahi. We also found some awesome cooperative Japanese video games, which were much more fun than the giant robot fights of the last few nights.